Muriel Awards: The Golden Muriel for Best Feature Film

"After a couple attempts at white elephant, Oscar-chasing art, Scorsese retreats with a remake of a (barely noteworthy, in my opinion) Hong Kong crime drama and crams it full of stars for good measure. And whaddya know -- with the help of William Monahan's pungent script, he gets not only some of the best reviews of his life, but the biggest box office as well. See what happens when you stop trying and just do? (I think Kundun said that.) Nicholson's accused of scenery chewing, but, as The Departed's heart and soul, he's really gnawing at the edges of the film, like a rat... or a termite." ~ Kent M. Beeson

"Marty’s comeback? Dude hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s the audience that refused to follow him- to 1870s New York , to Tibet , and so forth. That said, it’s good to see Scorsese jump back into the genre that more or less (ahem) made him, without sacrificing any of his style or verve. But Scorsese has always surrounded himself with able collaborators, and The Departed is no exception- William Monahan wrote the complex and gleefully salty screenplay, and the cast, made up almost entirely of Scorsese newbies, is as good as any from this past year. Some have complained that The Departed is too long, but I can’t imagine it working without the initial 90 minutes of buildup- it’s because Scorsese, Monahan, and the rest have laid the groundwork, establishing the principals and the conflicts, that once the reckonings come down and the bodies begin piling up, it means something rather than being simply a series of killings and plot twists." ~ Paul Clark

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Muriel Awards: Best Direction

"[Children of Men] inspires genuine hope even in the bleakest of possible futures... Cuaron just made a huge leap from a great up-and-coming director to one of the most important voices in cinema today." ~ Andrew Bemis

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Muriel Awards: Best Lead Performance, Male

"One of the pleasant surprises in Borat is the performance of Sacha Baron Cohen, who has added levels previously unseen to the Borat character. This is a Borat terrified of an old Jewish couple, mortified to learn of Pamela Anderson's sexual past, genuinely thrilled to learn of the death of his wife, and, at his most vulnerable point, pushed to the edge of collapse. Cohen handles all of this with aplomb and total dedication to his character. It's rare you even see such devotion to a role in any film, much less a broad comedy. Cohen owns the role, his transformation is complete. It's honestly one of the best performances of the last couple of years." ~ Lucas McNelly

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Muriel Awards: Best Lead Performance, Female

"Perhaps one of the most difficult things to do in acting is to portray a living legend who everyone has seen and heard a thousand times, because quite often the scrutiny of that performance is unbearable. Therefore Helen Mirren's achievement in "The Queen" is certainly no little thing, as nearly all who saw the movie watched with awe as she completely disappeared into the role of Elizabeth II during the uncomfortable week that she lost the mother of her grandchildren. Mirren's is one of the greatest performances of recent memory and the centerpiece of this finely crafted film." ~ R. Presley Stephens

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Muriel Awards: Best Cinematic Moment

"A lot of lip service was given to his cool long, technically difficult shots, but very little lip was given to how well they were integrated into the narrative. During the scenes I was aware of the shot, but like the opening of Touch of Evil, that awareness never broke my suspension of disbelief." ~ Martin McClellan

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Muriel Awards: Best Supporting Performance, Female

"Adriana Barraza's compelling performance in Babel takes the audience on the shattering journey through Amelia's fear and guilt-stricken terror after she is coerced into the unwise decision to take the two young children she nannies for (as an illegal immigrant) in Southern California across the Mexican border to attend her brother's wedding. On the return trip home, we watch in desperation as Barraza is forced to make a gut-wrenching life and death decision when things go terribly awry for she and the children in the unforgiving Mexican desert. Barraza's is the character I empathize with the most as she forges on in the unbearable desert heat like a fierce, yet trapped mother lion, pushed to the brink of madness." ~ Jenny Sekwa

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Muriel Awards: Best Supporting Performance, Male

"Marky Mark lit up the screen in The Departed every time he showed his face. I found myself actively yearning for his scenes as the film went on, to bring the life back to a movie I wasn't all that hot on. Some have called his tough guy performance a one-trick pony (comparing it to co-star Alec Baldwin's turn in Glengarry Glen Ross), but his best scene is the last one, in which he doesn't say a word." - Greg Dunlap

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Muriel Awards: Best DVD Release

"It’s becoming a bit of a DVD reviewer’s cliché to trumpet the latest spectacular Criterion release as the best thing the company’s ever done, or as a candidate for best DVD of the year. How much easier it would be to avoid using this burnished chestnut if the company would just stop creating DVD editions that could honestly be said to be the best of the year. And what Criterion has done with Richard Linklater’s superb evocation of high school life in small-town Texas in 1976, Dazed and Confused, will justify all enthusiastic descriptors, clichéd or not. The elements of a great disc are all there: a de rigueur all-new high-definition transfer (supervised by the director and cinematographer Lee Daniel); a Linklater audio commentary that highlights the director’s unique ability to be laid-back and verbose at the same time; a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film, which began shooting in 1992, that surpasses the standard “making-of” featurette by co-opting the cool, yet energetic observational style of the movie itself (it includes footage from the 10-year anniversary cast reunion); and Criterion’s usual top-drawer optional English subtitles.*

But beyond the digital treats, Criterion’s Dazed is a triumph of packaging—there’s a 72-page book, designed like a high school notebook, featuring essays by Jim DeRogatis on the music, Kent Jones on the movie, profiles of Linklater and the film by Chuck Klosterman and John Spong, and page after page of 'Profiles In Confusion,' yearbook-style portraits of all the film’s characters, major and minor, and even a reproduction of the film’s original one-sheet, all tucked in a psychedelic doodle of a slip box that looks like every PeeChee I ever disfigured in my pre-college days . You can get just as lost in Criterion’s package for the disc of this brilliant picture (not only a great high school movie but perhaps the best movie about small-town life I’ve ever seen) as you can in the movie itself.

* Full disclosure: I created those English subtitles for Criterion—it’s my day job. It may not seem like it, but there’s art as well as craft in rendering readable subtitles for movies that honor both the material and the intended audience. And it’s always more fun doing that kind of work when the movie is as wall-to-wall sharp and smart as Dazed and Confused. And, oh, yeah, I graduated high school in a small town in southern Oregon in 1977. This movie looks like a documentary to me." ~ Dennis Cozzalio

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Muriel Awards: Best Screenplay

Frank Costello: Have a seat, Bill.
[Costigan sits down at Costello's dinner table]
Frank Costello: [while eating crab] Do you know John Lennon?
Billy Costigan: Yeah, sure, he was the president before Lincoln.
Frank Costello: Lennon said, "I'm an artist. You give me a fucking tuba, I'll get you something out of it."
Billy Costigan: [sarcastically] Well I tell you Mr. Costello, I'd like to squeeze some fucking money out of it.
Frank Costello: Smart mouth. Too bad. If you'll indulge me...
[sees Gwen leaving]
Frank Costello: Now what?
Gwen: Choir practice.
Frank Costello: [annoyed] Choir practice.
[Costello pulls out a severed human hand]
Frank Costello: The point I'm making with John Lennon is - a man could look at anything, and make something out of it. For instance, I look at you and I think "what could I use you for?"

"Of course it's sharp and compelling and formally impressive; what surprises is that this film, built around twin life-or-death situations and constructed from slickness and paranoia, is funny. Really funny. (Best exchange, bar none: "How's your mother?" "Good. Still tired from fucking my father.") The premise, imported from the HK action winner Infernal Affairs, turns out to be as close to unfuckupable as most people suspected, and all Monahan and Scorsese really had to do was give the plot wheels a little push and everything would have turned out fine. Instead of that just-add-water approach that would have enticed lesser filmmakers into creating a mere punch-press modest entertainment, they aim big. Infernal Affairs is infused with a marvelous sense of local Boston color and enough close character work to propel the average novel; these inclusions transform the film from a crackerjack thriller into something more satisfying -- a gusting tapestry of human nature under pressure, at turns hilarious and heart-stopping." ~ Steven Carlson

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Muriel Awards: Best Cinematography

"Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography may be the best of the new millennium. The long takes allow for a constant increase in pressure that most filmmakers can only dream about achieving, making Children of Men the most extraordinary technical achievement of the year." ~ James Frazier

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Muriel Awards: Best Ensemble

"Jack Nicholson, given the right role, will act his co-stars under the table. This was the right role, which is why it's a testament to the amazing acting bravado of his colleagues that he wasn't able to steal the show entirely. And what colleagues: Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone and Alec Baldwin all doing some of the best work of their careers." ~ Matt Riviera

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Muriel Awards: Best First Feature As Director

"BRICK, a cinematic mash-up of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett detective stories with a contemporary high school drama, seems like a stylistic stunt, but writer-director Rian Johnson’s film works quite well. This isn’t an exercise in playing dress-up. The characters inhabit a place where disappointment and pain lurk around every corner, something all too familiar to teenagers. Johnson’s sources of inspiration for BRICK put forth tough dicks and dames in a cold, uncaring universe. Glum teens are a clever and natural evolution for the genre." ~ Mark Pfeiffer

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Muriel Awards: Best Breakthrough Performance

"[Hudson's] character has the most difficult arc in "Dreamgirls" and she plays it flawlessly. Funny and poignant, brash and tender, sometimes all at once. Oh, and did I mention she can sing her ass off?" ~ Jason Alley

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Presenting... The Muriel Awards.

If you've taken a look at my screening log lately, you may have noticed a downturn in the number of movies I've watched in the last week or so. While some of this may be chalked up to the weak caliber of January movies (when SMOKIN' ACES is the most intriguing-looking multiplex release, it's a fallow period indeed), I've also been busy with something else.

I've always enjoyed voting for movie awards. For years I've given out my own my own honors, which I would post on my now drastically-revamped site. I've also participated in numerous polls and online awards over the years, though I never resorted to voting for the People's Choice Awards, where my nomination of, say, KINGS AND QUEEN might not have gone over too well. So I suppose it was only a matter of time until I'd play a part in getting one of these things off the ground. Thanks to all who participated, in particular Steven Carlson who helped me immeasurably in gathering this year's voters:

Jason Alley
Kent M. Beeson
Andrew Bemis
Dennis Cozzalio
Greg Dunlap
James Frazier
Martin McClellan
Lucas McNelly
Mark Pfeiffer
Matt Riviera
Jenny Sekwa
R. Presley Stephens

While you're here, why not drop in on their sites as well?

I'm sure some of you are asking what's with the name of the awards (or not, if you're a regular reader over at Rickey)? Anyway, I decided that my guinea pig Muriel would be as good an inspiration/mascot as any, seeing as how, as I say on the Muriel Awards web site:

"[Muriel] is both temperamental and endlessly curious, two traits which are common to a lot of die-hard filmgoers. Of course, few of them are as cute..."

Plus the Muriel Awards has kind of a nice ring to it, in my opinion. Now all I need to do is name something else after my other guinea pig, Victoria, so she doesn't feel left out.

I'll be unveiling the award winners by category on this blog over the course of the next week or so, one per day, with the big prize- Best Feature Film- to be announced on President's Day, Monday, February 19. In addition, I'll be updating the Muriel Awards web site as I announce the awards, and when it's all said and done the page will also include ballots from the various voters, which should prove illuminating.

So watch this space, and enjoy!